Rapper, 3,000 Refused Club Entry

Rappers are known for their large entourages, but rap star Nelly might have broken a record.

The rapper and an accompanying crowd estimated at about 3,000 people were refused entry to a Lake of the Ozarks night club Saturday night.

“We were already full by midnight and had anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 people already inside,” Shooter’s 21 owner John Teichman told the Lake Sun Leader newspaper in Sunday’s edition. “When I realized Nelly and thousands of friends were trying to get inside the front door, I called the cops for help.”

The crowd was not violent, said Missouri Water Patrol officer J. Pragman, but people continued to try to push through the club’s locked doors. No injuries occurred and no one was arrested, Pragman said.

It took police almost two hours to disperse the crowd, he said.

“I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if I had let Nelly inside,” Teichman said. “With us already being full and that many people outside wanting in, it would have been a nightmare.”

Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Nelly’s record company, Universal, were unsuccessful Sunday.

Nelly’s 2000 album, “Country Grammar” was nominated for two Grammy Awards. The St. Louis native apparently was at the lake for a private party at the resort area’s water park.